This is arguably a poorly formed concept since its meaning can vary wildly depending on the referent of “you” but, hey, if Mr. Tozier is silly enough to tag me I’ll play along :-).
- I’ll start with something really random and meaningless: I have short pinkie fingers Actually, the fingers themselves are proportional to my other fingers, but there’s something a little off in the bones of the hand and both my pinkies start “too soon” and thus end about a joint short when compared to their neighbors. Its not exactly a big deal, as I didn’t even realize it until I was 13 or 14, when my piano teacher and I noticed it when I kept doing long reaches with my fourth finger insead my fifth. While I’m sharing trivial physical abnormalities, I also have a slightly curved spine, and smaller feet than expected for someone my height. My mother blames it all on smoking enthusiastically during both her pregnancies.
- I’ve only considered leaving UMM once since coming here in 1991. As a Reed (math) grad, I had always dreamed of helping found the computing department at Reed. They weren’t kind enough to set something up just as I was coming out of graduate school :-), but did advertise for their first computing faculty a few years after I came here and I couldn’t resist the opportunity. I didn’t even make the interview, but I have no regrets. I’ve been (and continue to be) really happy here at UMM.
- Like Bill, I read very slowly, although I think in different ways than Bill. I read slowly to begin with, and tend to do lots of daydreaming and thinking about what I’m reading on top of it. This is one of the reasons I’m a crap citizen of the blogsphere and related on-line worlds. There’s just way too much great stuff out there, and I’m way too slow a reader to stay on top of them. I suspect that’s one of the reasons I like Flickr; I can process a lot of images in the same time it would take me to read a fraction of PeeZed’s output.
- Dr. Seuss (and my son) helped me learned to sing. I’d always enjoyed music, but only started singing with any regularity when Sub-Evil Boy was born; it was nice singing to an (infant) audience that was so wonderfully non-judgemental. Reading lots of Dr. Seuss at the same time also taught me volumes about timing and rhythm. While I don’t miss diapers, I definitely miss reading to him every night.
- I have an Erdős number of 4. (Go to the Erdős Number Project for more info on how to compute your own Erdős Number.) The cool thing for me isn’t the number itself, but that it was lowered from 5 to 4 by a UMM alum (Nick Hopper) who I did research with when he was an undergraduate with. He went from here to CMU, where his advisor (and co-author) was Manuel Blum, who has an Erdős number of 1. Absolutely one of my highlights of my career at UMM, and I suspect this will be as low as my Erdős number ever goes. Rather remarkable it’s apparently the same as Bill Gates, but I suspect there are precious few other similarities between us.
2 Comments
Nobody asked ……
1. I first met the famous PZed in Eugene circa 1980 while hanging out with the UO Democrats. I found him harder to understand then than I do now. He has remained consistent in his perspective. I have learned much. I last saw him 3 years ago, at the same time I first met Phi in Morris. Small world.
2. I was once a minor professional motocross racer
3. My only son was with me for his 22nd birthday this week, which was the first time that has happened since he was 16. A wonderful day.
4. Along the the lines of your Erdos number, I am a very rare 5th generation native Oregonian. Oregon is known for its large influx of immigrants from other states.
5. I saw RFK at a rally in Bend Oregon a little over a week before he was shot down in LA. He did not win the Oregon primary, which some attribute to his stance on gun control.
I didn’t ask, but I thought about it. Your lack of a blog (at least as far as I know) seemed a bit of a problem, but I’m thrilled that you chose to share your response this way!
I didn’t realize that you’d met Paul that long ago. It is a strange, small world, isn’t it?
I’d love to hear more about the motocross experience. Can’t say I’d want to do it, but I bet it’s a great story.
That’s cool that you got to spend his birthday with your son, and I’m very glad that you had a good time together.
5th gen is indeed quite remarkable. Heck, I’m only 5th generation in the U.S. along several of my lines! Two of my great-great grandparents came over from Switzerland and settled around New Glarus, Wisconsin, in the 1860s. I’ve got other lines that go back twice that far in the States, but I don’t think anything coming close to five generations in the same state. Do you get a medal or a key to the state or anything?
That must have been quite a blow to hear of his assasination shortly after you saw him. Tragedies like that always seem to hit harder if you’ve seen or had some recent contact with the person, even if it was distant (like attending a rally). My sister was at Stevie Ray Vaughn’s last concert; I was doing a radio show in Austin, TX, that night and had been talking up the fact that my sister was getting to see him live up north. Because someone called the news in while I was on air, I actually learned that he’d been killed in the helicopter crash leaving the concert site before she did. Quite weird.
Thanks again! Consider yourself retroactively asked, and permanently invited to share this space!